


penny in the air

by madasaboxofcats



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Comedy, F/F, Spoilers for Episode: 2015 Xmas The Husbands of River Song
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-19
Updated: 2017-07-19
Packaged: 2018-12-04 02:43:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11545833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madasaboxofcats/pseuds/madasaboxofcats
Summary: She is standing in front of the museum's display case for Sir George White – lovely fellow, lousy at cards – when she hears it.“Sweetie! There you are. I’d begun to think you’d forgotten.”The Doctor freezes. It can’t be.“And what on earth are you wearing?”--The TARDIS takes a freshly-regenerated Thirteenth Doctor to a River who may or may not know her.





	penny in the air

This isn’t where she was supposed to be.

She was supposed to be on a beach somewhere doing lovely beach things to recover from, you know, dying, but no. She’s here. In Scotland, of all places.

She looks at the console, shiny and new and so beautifully, vibrantly blue.

“When I said I wanted an island, this wasn’t what I meant, and you bloody well know it.”

The responding whir sounds almost chipper. The TARDIS has a twisted sense of humor on her, she does.

The Doctor is scarcely two steps out the door when she nearly falls on her face, stumbling around in shoes that are in no way practical for running or adventuring or saving people.

Stealing River’s high heels from the back of the closet – her 12th self had never been able to bring himself to get rid of her things, sentimental old kook – was perhaps not her best idea, but one must improvise when one wakes up in a body that no longer fits one’s clothes. She’s been essentially the same height for centuries and waking up to find herself suddenly six inches too short for her trousers was a bit disconcerting.

Which is how she ended up with these godawful torture devices on her feet. They’re painful and wholly impractical, but they’re tall enough to keep her trouser legs out of puddles and such, if she rolls them up just a bit.

Maybe she needs more of a new wardrobe than just shoes.

But first thing’s first. The TARDIS brought her here for a reason, and the Doctor doubts it’s to provide her with more suitable attire. If that had been the goal, surely the TARDIS would have landed her in a Harrods or something, not dropped her the middle of a street in late-21st century Aberdeen.

She looks around.

No immediate signs of distress. She’s standing in front a museum (the Gordon Highlanders Museum, to be exact). It’s still intact, the handful of people exiting the building look healthy and well-informed, there aren’t any Daleks or Cybermen or Sontarans that she can see.

She makes her way towards the building. If anyone thinks it’s strange how slowly the Doctor is walking, they don’t say anything about it. If anyone thinks her outfit is strange – a waistcoat, a button down shirt with sleeves that swallow her hands, a belt cinched tightly around her hips to hold up her too-long pants, and red high heels – they don’t say anything about that either.

When she makes it to the ticket counter, the woman scarcely looks up at her before passing a ticket under the plastic partition in exchange for a bit of psychic paper that she’d dug out of her pocket.

If there aren’t any immediate signs of danger, she may as well go look for herself in the museum somewhere. It’s been ages since her last museum perusal.

It’s a military museum, commemorating a Scottish army regiment. There are life-size replicas all over the place and for a moment, the Doctor thinks about mannequins come to life, wonders if these figures are the reason she’s here. But they don’t move or attack the people who walk by, so she moves along.

She’s standing in front of a display case for a Sir George White – lovely fellow, lousy at cards – when she hears it.

“Sweetie! There you are. I’d begun to think you’d forgotten.”

The Doctor freezes. It can’t be.

“And what on _earth_ are you wearing?”

She stutters out her response. Apparently this body stutters too, if sufficiently provoked. “River.”

“Yes, of course River. Do you have someone else you’re meeting today?”

River’s hand is on her hip and she smiles. It’s cheeky and it’s brilliant and the Doctor doesn’t know if she should kiss her stupid blue box or disassemble it piece by piece for bringing her here, to a River who knows her and is happy to see her.

The Doctor tries not to think too much about how River would know her – she remembers a book of pictures, 12 of them, none of them this face. Things stopped making sense a long time ago, and she’s just grateful to not have to relive the pain of looking in River’s eyes and seeing no recognition at all.

(She thinks about the Library, about the empty eyes that River must have seen, about how alone she was in her final moments, no one with her but a Doctor that knew nothing about anything. Her hearts twinge.)

“No. No, of course not. No one else.”

There’s never anyone else, she wants to say, but doesn’t.

River looks her up and down.

“You didn’t answer me about the clothes.”

Perhaps she should have gotten that new wardrobe first after all.

Bloody TARDIS should have warned her that she’d be running into River.

“Laundry day?” is the best she can come up with.

River chuckles and turns to look at the display case in front of them. “Sir George White. Fine man. Rubbish at cards. Lost four games of strip poker in a row the last time I saw him, though I suspect he gave up after the first two.”

The Doctor smiles. It’s a good memory.

A memory. Which should be in their diaries.

She fumbles through her pockets for the book while River looks at her curiously. Lint. Two sherbet lemons. A pocket screwdriver – the non-sonic kind. A coin with a bird on it. A biscuit. No diary.

Blast. Must be in the other trousers.

“River, diaries. Where is yours? Sir George is in it, then?”

She looks at her like she’s got two heads instead of two hearts.

“Of course he’s in it. What are you on about?”

It takes a second, but she understands. River must think she’s a right moron.

This River is clearly post-Darillium (or maybe mid-Darillium – there were a couple of months in there when they had that awful row and spent some time apart). Her face is all liney, although the Doctor can’t remember if it’s more or less liney than the last time they were together, and she’s smart enough to know better than to ask. That got her Bowtie incarnation in trouble more than once, commenting on liney faces.

Either way, any River that knows her, that knows this face, is more or less contemporaneous, no diaries necessary.

The museum docent brings an elderly couple by the display, blathering on about the different medals and the like. Medals are boring and at least one of them, the Doctor knows for a fact, was stolen from a heroic Silurian who never gets the credit he deserves.

River slips an arm through hers and she doesn’t feel the need to pull away.

It’s nice, almost. It doesn’t make her skin crawl.

“Come, wife,” she says, “I think they still have one of mine at the India exhibit.”

They walk arm in arm, and the Doctor is glad to have River to lean on.

River talks about her last dig, a monstrous find on Alpha Centauri (“I didn’t even cheat on this one. Much.”) and there’s something different about her. She seems freer. Less burdened.

She’s stunning.

“You keep staring at me like that, you’re going to scandalize those old people following behind us.”

It might sound like a reprimand if not for River’s hand sneaking down to pat the Doctor’s behind.

“Let them be scandalized, then. I don’t intend to stop looking.”

That earns her an extra squeeze, and if the Doctor squeaks a little in surprise, well, she tries to be dignified about it.

\---

It takes them another hour to get through the museum.

(“Wrong, wrong, they got it so wrong,” River looks at the India exhibit, alternating between amused and vaguely offended.)

By the time River suggests they head to the gardens behind the museum, the Doctor feels like her feet are going to fall off.

It must have shown on her face because River laughs, and holds her hand out. “Take them off. Roll up those ridiculous trousers, come with me, and I’ll give you your present.”

The Doctor mentally checks off dates in her head. Not Christmas. She doesn’t have a birthday, not really – or, rather, she has plenty of birthdays, 13 of them to be precise, but this isn’t any of them. Not River’s birthday. Not Fish Fingers and Custard Day.

“Present?”

River is not looking at her, tying her hair up and the Doctor is privately very grateful that at least her own hair is more manageable than River’s. Or she thinks it is, at any rate. She hasn’t really tried to do anything with it yet.

“Shoes first, sweetie. You’ll be utterly useless if we need to make a quick exit.”

A quick exit. God, this woman is trouble.

It’s her favorite thing about her, really.

“River, what’s in the garden?”

She smirks in reply but doesn’t say anything.

The Doctor kicks the shoes off of her feet and tries not to fall over at the same time. She manages, but only just.

Shoes in hand and pants rolled up, she follows River into the garden.

It’s lush and the ground squishes under her feet – paths are overrated, which she just now decided – and everything is really quite beautiful. She tells River so, River who is walking a bit ahead and taking them along the edge of the gardens.

“Yes, it is. But that’s hardly the point, now, is it?”

She stops, turns right, and walks through the lilies. She doesn’t step on any – she is an archaeologist, and it would be rude – but she walks through them just the same. Whatever she’s interested in is in the woods that skirt the edge of the property. She disappears from sight.

Doctor struggles to keep up with the quick pace, high heels in one hand, stopping every few minutes to bend down and re-roll a trouser leg. Blasted thing keeps unraveling and getting mud on it.

“River,” she stops to adjust her trousers again. “What’s in the garden?”

River leans out from behind a tree.

“The backdoor.”

When the Doctor rounds the corner, she sees that it’s not so much a back door as it a neatly-shaped hole in the wall of the building. “Squareness gun?”

River nods. “It’s my spare. Picked it up the last time I popped into the 51st century. Other one’s at home somewhere.”

“Brilliant.”

She traipses through the lilies to stand next to her wife, who leans into her, their shoulders brushing.

“I am, aren’t I.”

It’s a statement, not a question, and River’s wink is obvious even in her voice. The Doctor can’t help but roll her eyes a bit.

“River.”

“Yes, darling?”

She turns to the hole in the wall.

“Why are we breaking into the museum that we just left?”

If River is listening, she gives no indication. Her ear is turned towards the building, like she’s waiting for something.

An alarm rings out and if she squints, she can just make out the museum personnel flooding out the front door in a panic.

“There it is.” She turns to the Doctor, “We’re breaking in because I promised you an adventure and I promised you a present. Now, hurry up. We’ve got to be out in five minutes.”

Five minutes. Five minutes is nothing.

“Oh, you can do loads in five minutes.”

She regrets the words almost immediately.

River leans in. Her eyes run up and down the Doctor’s body so slowly that it’s difficult not to squirm and maybe they really should hurry up because five minutes isn’t that long after all and good lord, this woman’s gaze is intense.

“Oh, honey.” Her voice is low, her eyes settled on the Doctor’s lips. “I know.”

She can feel the blush burning up her neck. River always seems to be able to do this to her, doesn’t matter what body she’s in.

The Doctor swallows and tries to think about important things, like the mechanics breaking and entering while carrying high heels and periodically lifting one’s trousers.

They make it to the World War I exhibit without issue, River leading them to stand in front of a display case labeled “Artifacts Recovered, Battalion 7, 1915.” The case is full of personal items – letters and photographs and figurines and a vase of indiscernible origin. A ring sits in the middle of the display, the center sapphire glinting in the lights that surround it.

There’s an empty spot next to it, and a card underneath – “Male wedding band currently unavailable for viewing.”

She’d bet the key to the TARDIS that River is behind the “unavailability.”

River’s fingers trail across the display glass.

“When my parents died, I began to look into some family history. I was quite lonely and it made me feel closer to them, I suppose, to learn where they came from.”

The Doctor remains silent. River doesn’t talk much about Manhattan, about what happened afterwards, when she left the TARDIS. Probably because she never felt like she could, because Bowtie was too in love with his own grief to notice hers.

He was a right bastard, a rubbish husband.

She knows that now, has known that since Darillium at the very least, since River and the cruise ship and “the Doctor does not and has never loved me” said with such heartbreaking earnestness.

She knows it, and she hates herself for it.

So she lets River speak because she so rarely does, because maybe the Doctor can be a better wife than she was a husband.

“My mother’s great, great grandfather served in World War I. Left behind his wife and their daughter to fight with the Seventh Battalion. He was the most Scottish man to ever live – you would’ve hated him.”

The Doctor chuckles, and River smiles a bit.

“When he went off, she put her wedding ring on a chain and told him to keep it with him always. When they found his body, it was clutched in his hand.”

River is still smiling, looking at her, when she smashes the display glass. It’s a humongous hole and there are shards everywhere and the Doctor is still barefoot and this seems like a poorly-thought-out plan.

“What did you need to do that for? You have a squareness gun!”

Her smile turns into a smirk. “I didn’t need to do that, sweetie, I wanted to. Smashing glass is so much more fun than squarenessing it.”

River reaches into the case and pulls out the ring.

“I know our wedding was a bit quick and the world was ending so there wasn’t time to buy rings. I thought you should have this one.”

The ring slides onto her finger.

River leans in for a kiss, “Happy anniversary.”

It takes a bit for her words to sink in – kissing is incredibly distracting and it feels so different in this body, soft and velvety and River really is quite good at this and what was she saying again?

But they do sink in.

Eventually.

“River, it’s October.”

Their anniversary is in April, which the Doctor remembers because it also happens to be the day that she died and getting married and dying in the same day make it rather memorable.

“Yes, it is.”

River leans back in and they’re kissing again and so what if she got the date wrong? It’s not like the Doctor’s been particularly good about remembering things up until this point. But she’s going to be better, she is, because River deserves someone who remembers birthdays and anniversaries and to say nice things every now and then.

River’s watch buzzes and she pulls away. “Time to go. Looks like we’ll have company very shortly.”

The Doctor huffs. Five minutes really isn’t as much time as she thought.

She shakes the glass shards from the bottoms of her trousers and looks again at the display case.

“Where’s the other one? The other ring? I assume it was his.”

River probably has it stored away somewhere, or maybe she’s soldered it into a ring for her. That would be nice. They’ve never done that before, the matching rings thing. Her Twelfth incarnation did, an old ring that River gave him ages ago, but River never had a matching one.

Might be nice, this go around.

“Oh, I gave that to my husband ages ago.”

The Doctor blinks.

What.

“Ramon?”

She scans her memory, looking for images of Ramon’s hands to see if there was a ring. She thinks about Ramon’s hands, but the only images she can come up with are Ramon’s hands on River’s face, Ramon’s mouth on River’s mouth, and maybe she should stop thinking about this and let River answer.

“Ramon? No, of course not. He’s pretty to look at, but – how did you know about Ramon? I don’t recall ever mentioning him before.”

The next possibility makes her feel a bit sick to her stomach.

“Hydroflax, then? River, he’s a bloody android, he doesn’t even have proper fingers!”

How many other ruddy spouses can she have? And where does she get off, going around giving them special family rings? That’s now how they work – they marry other people, sure, when it’s convenient or when it’s royalty and you can’t really say no without being rude, but it’s never real.

Not the way they are, the way they have always been.

“The Doctor. The bowtie-wearing idiot I’ve been married to for the better part of three centuries.”

The Doctor blinks, uncomprehending.

“You call him ‘the biggest moron in all of the galaxies.’ Think he’s a bit of a prick. Ringing any bells?”

River looks at her, concerned.

“Where _has_ your head gotten to today?”

Penny in the air.

“The Doctor. But I am –“

Penny drops.

Christmas.

A River who had twelve faces but no more.

A conversation about removing her robot husband’s head, and then:

_You know who you remind me of?_

Oh.

_My second wife!_

Bollocks.

Bollock bollocks bollocks.

There’s a crash and a broken pot on the floor and the Doctor didn’t mean to break more of the stupid glass, she didn’t, but realizations were had and realizations cause involuntary movement and now there are three angry docents bursting in the door. Which wouldn’t be a big deal if they weren’t glaring at her and River and turning orange.

Bright, traffic cone, Cheeto orange.

“Sweetie, we’ll have to finish this conversation later.”

River grabs her hand.

”Run.”

They do.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even know, y'all. 
> 
> I'm at a work conference. I'm supposed to be doing work things. And reading books on the beach in my off time. 
> 
> This announcement has clearly ruined my life.


End file.
